


The Reader

by Aja



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Literature, M/M, Russian Literature, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-09-29
Updated: 2003-09-29
Packaged: 2017-11-10 20:08:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/470168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aja/pseuds/Aja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death. War. Poetry. Love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Reader

**Author's Note:**

> This is a late birthday present for Maya. I wish I could write something worthy of your sweetness and goodness and your sheer overwhelming talent, but that is simply impossible, so I hope you and your Draco will accept this instead. I love and admire you always. 
> 
> Thank you: to Dave, Erica, Orphne, Kash, and Veronica, for pre-reads and encouragement, and to Christianne, who will know why.

Sometimes the scar on Harry’s hand burned more than the one on his forehead. It was red and ugly, and every time he glanced at it a surge of hatred would fill him. He wound up glancing at his hand a lot, what with one thing and another, and he felt like the hate must have just broiled up inside him one day and stayed there. Hate for Umbridge. For Snape. For Sirius. For the Dursleys. For Wormtail. For Bellatrix Lestrange. The Malfoys. Fudge. The Death Eaters. Even, at times, Dumbledore. And Voldemort. Always Voldemort.

He had two scars that were always in the way now.

Remus and the others wrote to him twice as often as they did before, and this time their letters were full of any and all available news from the wizarding world: gossip, ministry proclamations, reported Auror activity, unconfirmed isolated attacks by the Death Eaters. Every week brought two or three copies of the same article from Ron and Hermione at least, if not one or more of the adults. The ludicrousness of it would have been enough to make him laugh, except that all his energy was focused on not hating them as well. It seemed as if there were twice as many reasons now to hate them, all of them, and some days he thought he would drown in the hate he felt. He managed, he thought, to get by without hating Ron and Hermione, or Remus and Tonks and Mad-Eye—but sometimes that was only by imagining the ways he would hurt Dudley the next time he lay a hand on him, or, more often, closing his eyes and muttering “Crucio” under his breath, picturing a helpless and broken Bellatrix Lestrange on the other end of his wand.

Summer waned. On the train to Hogwarts he found Malfoy with Crabbe and Goyle, and leveled three strong hexes at them before any of them even had a chance to turn around. He felt freedom in that move—he had been waiting to do that all summer long; and when he let himself enjoy the sight of Malfoy laid out flat on the floor of the compartment with a shiner the size of a teacup forming over his eye, he realized that he had forgotten the sound of his own laugh.

In the first weeks of autumn it rained, and the grounds of Hogwarts smelled of rotten leaves and wet dog. He walked with his hands in his pockets, trying not to inhale directly, and trying with less success not to think of Sirius. He accepted the position of Quidditch captain without protest when it was offered to him, but found plenty of things to say about it on the field. He thought vaguely that his teammates were beginning to resent him, but since that was their problem, he didn’t worry about it. He made them fly until the insides of their thighs were numb from straddling their broom-handles, until their hands were blistered and chapped, their cheeks raw from the wind; but still it was better than thinking about what he would do to Wormtail when he met him again, or imagining that his hand was wrapped, not around the Golden Snitch, but Snape’s balls, twisting and clenching until he made the good professor scream in pain.

He flatly refused to practice Occlumency, or even to discuss the subject with Professor Dumbledore, deriving too much satisfaction out of the pain that passed over the headmaster’s face when he realized nothing he could say would make a difference. Harry tried his best to block out the visions through sheer strength of will when they came to him—but sometimes he failed, and often in his sleep he would be visited by horrible visions of what Voldemort was planning (perhaps dreaming) of doing to him.

It was becoming harder and harder to talk about things. Or even to talk at all. Sometimes for no reason at all he would find himself in conversations with Ron, wanting to yell that Ron was becoming more like Percy every day and that that stupid badge had gone to his head. Instead he just kept quiet and closed his eyes on the image of Percy with his Ministry name tag jammed down his throat. Hermione was always there for him, without making a big deal of it. He was grateful, and loved her, but at the same time it wasn’t enough. He didn’t know what was, or what could ever be, so he stayed irritable, and snapped at her, apologizing and feeling guilty when she grew peevish and took his head off in turn. This went on at fairly regular intervals, but eventually it got to be its own sort of comfort, like Trelawney telling him he was going to die, or Malfoy spitting in his direction whenever he walked by.

October came; the wind grew bitter and more fierce, and with it came the war. How pathetic it had been for Harry to think that the war had already begun, simply because of a few attacks here, a few disappearances there. That was not war.

War awoke them all in the dead of night, near the beginning of the month when the leaves were just beginning to turn. The attacks had begun only hours earlier. Witches and wizards had been captured and bound and made to watch while Muggles were taken out into the streets and murdered. Seamus’ mother had been raped, his father stoned to death. He sat on the bed staring with wide eyes while Dean clenched his fist and said “No,” over and over in a low, lost voice. Hermione’s grandparents were missing. Colin wrote one owl after another and took them to the Owlery to send off to his parents asking them where they were, only to be turned away at the door by Filch, who said the Owlery was already so crowded the owls could barely get in and out.. Dennis clung to Ginny and sobbed. Parvati and Lavender frantically packed, throwing things blindly into suitcases as they swallowed tears—Parvati’s father was sending for the twins, intending to remove them to Kuala Lumpur; and since no one had heard from Lavender’s family she was going with them.

In the morning the sun shone, and Harry wondered how; the students gathered in broken clusters in the Great Hall, their voices lowered, the great troubled silence penetrated only by weeping as the stories filtered in. Jack Sloper’s father and oldest brothers, killed fighting back while his mother and sisters tried to escape. Justin Finch-Fletchley’s ancestral home, destroyed. Riots in Diagon Alley—the twins’ joke shop vandalized past all hope of recompense. Luna Lovegood’s father owling her to say he was going on “special assignment” and telling her to be a good girl. Millicent Bulstrode, having successfully hid her heritage from her housemates for six years, waking up to find her mother dead and her huge cat’s throat cut beside her in bed, and all of Slytherin huddling in two divided clumps across the room—Malfoy and his gang of purebloods throwing hard looks at Millicent, and the rest closed in tightly around her, their arms protectively around each other; and every one of them looking as if they couldn’t decide whether to cry or throw up.

Parents came all day long, some to remove their children from school, some to deliver news of more devastation, but most to give tearful reassurances: yes, their families were alright; yes, the Ministry was doing all it could; yes, the students would be safe there, at Hogwarts. Harry watched it all through an emotionless fog. He had seen this all before. His whole life had been something no one else could have possibly understood. Now, his glance darting quickly over the faces around him (quickly, because tears weren’t something you wanted to stare at), he realized: he wasn’t alone anymore. Suddenly everyone understood.

Harry hadn’t thought that such a realization would make him feel worse. But it did.

The leaves fell, and the oppressive silence continued. Students held hands as they walked to classes, and teachers anxiously searched the skies. Harry wondered angrily what they were waiting for, and managed not to tell Hermione that her grip was hurting his hand.

Dumbledore insisted that classes go on as usual; but his stirring school addresses no longer filled the students with hope and courage. They hunched their shoulders against the wind, and continued to talk in hushed voices, and Harry found that he couldn’t even be bothered to punch Malfoy when Malfoy stopped bothering to trip him in hallways.

The weeks dragged. Quidditch practice grew unbearable, and Gryffindor flew like their brooms were made of lead; but he drove them pitilessly and sometimes discovered that he was still circling the pitch long after night had fallen.

McGonagall and Snape taught DADA in tandem, and the regular meetings of Dumbledore’s Army grew so popular that Harry received permission to have them in the afternoons in the Great Hall. It was easy for the Slytherins to slip in, in a timid huddle behind Millicent Bulstrode, standing with her wand clutched tightly in her large hand; and it was even easier to let them stay, especially when Pansy Parkinson caught Hermione’s eye and they smiled briefly at one another. Harry taught them all without bias, barking instructions and feeling a bit like a drill sergeant. When Malfoy arrived with Crabbe and Goyle one afternoon, Seamus asked Harry coldly in front of everyone why he was teaching self-defense to the very people they would have to fight. Harry, on the verge of telling Malfoy and the others to get lost, instead heard himself responding just as coldly that the best way to know your enemy’s weakness was to teach them yourself. Malfoy spoke up then, watching them from under half-shut eyes, and said exactly what Harry had not wanted to hear: Potter possessed a very Slytherin way of thinking.

Harry drew his wand, and that afternoon’s training session passed more quickly than most.

By Halloween sub-artic drafts swept through the dungeons, and Potions was hell frozen over. On the anniversary of his parents’ death, Harry sat shivering, hating Snape, and thinking that in five and a half years the one staple of his existence had been that the people he hated when he was eleven were the same people he hated at sixteen. No harvest colors decorated the halls that day, and very few people had treats from home to celebrate Halloween; the Ministry was carefully screening all owls to the school, and the mail was often delayed weeks at a time. Harry had not heard from Remus beyond a brief note to tell him that Tonks had been seriously injured and Kingsley Shacklebolt killed in one of the latest battles outside Sussex. Harry didn’t want to think about why Remus did not write again. And yet it was hard to think of anything good in Potions. Snape was monstrous as always, and he was as hostile to the Gryffindors as ever. Gryffindor and Slytherin hated one another more than ever—but behind the hatred everyone knew that everyone else was afraid.

Something must have happened to put Snape in an even fouler mood than usual. He snapped at students with aplomb, Slytherin and Gryffindor alike. An unshakeable pallor hung over the dungeon, and he seemed determined to cut through it with the sharpness of his words. The students listened in passive silence. Snape’s rancor was nothing to them now. Even Malfoy had come to view the class with complacency. He never volunteered answers anymore, and when, at length, Snape called upon him, he didn’t look up from his reading.

It took Snape three times calling his name to get his attention. When he looked up at last Harry saw that his expression was distant. Snape strode over to his desk and suggested furiously that since Mr. Malfoy was so engrossed in his reading, perhaps he might deign to share his entertainment with the rest of the class. Before Malfoy had a chance to respond, Snape had grabbed him by the back of his robes and yanked him to his feet. As he turned back to the front of the room, scowling, everyone looked at Malfoy; but Malfoy didn’t look humiliated. The picked up the book he had been reading. It was small, a paperback, and obviously new—the cover was still stiff, and Malfoy had to fold it back twice to get it to stay open. Malfoy glanced once around the room and then began to read in an unwavering voice:

“They were flying. The weights fell off; there was nothing to bear. They laughed and held on tight, feeling the cold slap of wind and altitude, soaring, thinking  _It's over, I'm gone!_  - they were naked. They were light and free-it was all lightness, bright and fast and buoyant, light as light, a helium buzz in the brain, a giddy bubbling in the lungs as they were taken up over the Clouds and the war, beyond duty, beyond gravity and mortification anti global entanglements - _Sin loi!_  They yelled,  _I'm sorry, motherfuckers, but I'm out of it, I'm goofed, I'm on a space cruise, I'm gone!_  -and it was a restful, disencumbered sensation, just riding the fight waves, sailing; that big silver freedom bird over the mountains and oceans, over America, over the farms and great sleeping cities and cemeteries and highways and the Golden Arches of McDonald's. It was flight, a kind of fleeing, a kind of falling, falling higher and higher, spinning off the edge of the earth and beyond the sun and through the vast, silent vacuum where there were no burdens and where everything weighed exactly nothing.  _Gone!_  they screamed,  _I'm sorry but I'm gone!_  And so at night, not quite dreaming, they gave themselves over to lightness, they were carried, they were purely borne.”

Then he took his seat.

When the reading was over no one breathed—everyone was still looking at Malfoy, and the words he had spoken hung in the air for an unending moment. Not even Snape moved, until finally he resumed his lesson without a word of acknowledgment.

And it seemed to Harry that in the space of those few moments that he was flying again—flying the way he had not flown in weeks; and that with each word Malfoy read in his smooth, slightly stiff voice, something was being reborn inside of him, and inside everyone around him. They listened to the rest of the lesson in alert silence, the crackle of life in the air replacing the oppressive unspoken despair that nothing had yet been able to vanquish.

The students talked of it gently among themselves that afternoon; at dinner Harry saw the book being passed around at the Slytherin table. Later, as they lay in the dark, Ron asked him in a small voice what he supposed Malfoy had been reading out of.

Harry didn’t know, but he guessed it was okay.

Halfway through the following potions lesson they were interrupted by Snape barking unceremoniously, his back turned to the class, “Mr. Malfoy, I thought you had learned not to indulge in your ridiculous leisure activities in this classroom unless you are to share them with the rest of us!”

Malfoy, who had been taking notes, put his pen down with a look of bafflement. “But, Professor, I wasn’t—”

“Silence,” Snape seethed, still with his back to the students. “Do you want to lose the meager number of points you have managed to procure for your house, Mr. Malfoy?”

Every eye was open and alert. Malfoy, staring at his head of house in obvious shock, managed, “No.” Then, all at once, his face cleared; understanding entered it, and also, Harry thought, a touch of gladness.

For no reason whatsoever Harry felt his heart seize in his chest, and he watched Malfoy reach down and pull from his knapsack another small brown book, not the same one he had read from before, but a thin volume bound with leather, the embossing of which had worn away over many years of handling. He paused, and then flipped deliberately to the back of the book.

Snape did not turn around, nor did he say anything more, so Malfoy simply stood and began to read without further encouragement, his voice slow and steady in the silence around him.

“The water of the Gulf stretched out before her, gleaming with the million lights of the sun. The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude. All along the white beach, up and down, there was no living thing in sight. A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water.

But when she was there beside the sea, absolutely alone, she cast the unpleasant, pricking garments from her, and for the first time in her life she stood naked in the open air, at the mercy of the sun, the breeze that beat upon her, and the waves that invited her.”

And so he continued to read, until the calm of his voice had settled over the room. For Harry, it didn’t seem to matter so much what became of the woman and the sea—what mattered was that Malfoy was reading, quietly and assuredly, of lapping foam, of sunlight and openness, of fears that sank at last under a bright green ocean; and while Malfoy read, a part of Harry’s own fear seemed to sink as well.

When the reading was over, the Potions lesson continued as if nothing had happened. That night at dinner, Hermione grabbed Harry’s arm and wordlessly pointed him toward the Slytherin table. Luna was leading a group of Ravenclaws over to where Malfoy sat. As they watched, she exchanged words with him, he nodded curtly, and the group of students relaxed visibly. Malfoy went back to his meal.

The news quickly spread to their half of the room: they had wanted to hear what Malfoy had been reading in Potions. He had agreed to read to them after dinner.

Harry hadn’t meant to stay behind, but it happened, and he was still lingering over his food when the students gathered around to hear Malfoy. He repeated the same passage from the book, while the Ravenclaws and the Hufflepuffs, and most of the Slytherins and Gryffindors, looked on, listening. A cool hush filled that great room, and even the house-elves stood still as Malfoy read to the students.

That night Harry dreamed, not of Voldemort, but of his mother, wearing the foam of the ocean like a cloak around her, murmuring in soft tones he would recognize upon waking as Malfoy’s voice, “goodbye—because I love you.”

November brought the hardest leg of the war yet. Arthur Weasley and his son frequently spent days holed up at the Ministry while the battle raged just over their heads in the streets of London proper. Ron grew pale and silent, and he joined Harry in saying as little as possible.

Rumors flew about that Hogwarts was no longer safe—that spies for the Dark Lord had infiltrated the castle, and were planning an eventual attack. The students cast suspicious, furtive glances at each other, and kept wary tabs on everyone else’s business; yet during the weekly self-defense meetings of Dumbledore’s Army, and during the weekly readings that Malfoy gave, the atmosphere of distrust vanished.

In the first instance it was because Harry demanded it. He had taken Malfoy for his partner from that first day, and although Harry didn’t trust him as far as he could spit outside of that room, within it, for one hour of the week, he knew Malfoy would never attempt to play him false in front of all those other people. Their arrangement had rubbed off on the other students, and Slytherins were routinely paired with Gryffindors in their defense training. If Malfoy hated the treatment he was subjected to, being Harry’s partner week after week, and usually coming off the worst of it, he suffered in silence. He would glare daggers at Harry, but never say a word. The other students learned from them, and since nobody was a faster learner than Malfoy, Harry was satisfied as long as he kept quiet and kept Harry on his toes.

In the second instance, Harry was certain Malfoy had nothing to do with bringing anyone together. He certainly hadn’t asked for anything like a weekly dead poet’s society to be thrust upon him; and to Harry’s surprise he never gave any sign of enjoying the attention, or of looking forward to the reading, save that one flicker of gladness Harry remembered passing over his face. He delivered the readings without ceremony, once a week, and soon nearly the entire student body was in attendance. He never boasted, or in fact talked about it outside of the event itself. Had Harry not happened upon him in the library once or twice, he would never have guessed that Malfoy was spending time routinely pouring over Muggle literature, combing through scores of dusty books in order to find just the right passage to quote from.

He gave no indication that anything had changed. But anyone would have to be a fool not to see that something was different. Some days all he read was a few sentences, just as he had on that first day. Other days he read for nearly a quarter of an hour. Some days he read poems or songs, but they were always plain and simple to understand. Some days he read about death, or about love; some days he read about war. Some days Harry thought he wasn’t reading much about anything at all. But it didn’t seem to matter what he read—only that he was reading, and everyone was listening.

Harry never recognized any of the things Malfoy read, but he didn’t think it mattered much. Hermione insisted that if Malfoy was reading Muggle books there was still a chance he might not join the Death-Eaters—but Harry thought that if Malfoy were ever to be reformed it wouldn’t be because of some books. If Lucius Malfoy were dead, perhaps—but when Harry closed his eyes and thought of what it would be like to kill him, he found, for once, that he had better things to do.

The war continued. Owls from home were fewer and fewer, and after one owl was returned to its owner in pieces, Harry decided not to send Hedwig out again. One of the people who still got mail was Mandy Brocklehurst. Her sister attended a private Muggle school for girls, where they had services every day for the lost and the dying. She would write to her of the war, and how everyone thought the black-masked men were some sort of IRA branch-off, and how no one believed her at school when she told them the truth. She would send Mandy thin tracts and bookmarks given to her by the sisters at the school, which informed her that the evil had hardened their hearts and turned their faces from God, and that they would destroy themselves.

Ernie Macmillan would rip up Mandy Brocklehurst’s tracts. His oldest brother had been missing for three weeks. “If they destroy themselves,” he said, “it’ll only be because we’ve let them destroy all of us first and they’ve got nobody left to kill.” Harry would think about what Ernie had said as he listened to Malfoy read, and sometimes, before he could stop himself, he thought that if Malfoy’s was the face of evil, then no wonder they were all dropping like flies.

Ernie wanted to leave the castle and go fight, but he didn’t because his mother had begged him to stay at Hogwarts where it was safe. He and Zacharias Smith didn’t think it was all that safe, either. They carried on loudly about the deficiencies in Hogwarts security, at mealtimes and in the hallways, until Professor Sprout scooted over to them and begged them to be quieter for the sake of the younger students. Ron was of the opinion that Zach Smith needed his head ground into the cobblestones til he was straightened out, having never quite forgiven him for distrusting Harry the year before. Harry was of the opinion that Hogwarts hadn’t been safe for years, and if no one had thought it a bit odd that he kept narrowly escaping death before this, then maybe it’d do them all some good to be shaken up.

Harry, for the most part, remained unshaken. He wondered sometimes if a heart really could be hardened; if there were things a person could only see so many times, such as murder, before something inside them shut down and refused to be moved at all. Yet some things still made him uneasy, such as knowing that Professor Snape had wanted Malfoy to read to the class that second day, not because he had been punishing Malfoy, but because he had known the students needed to hear it; such as the way Malfoy’s features became impassive when he read, and took on the look of a much younger boy—a boy Harry couldn’t really wrap his brain around one day having to kill; such as the way Professor Dumbledore’s steps grew slower and more careful every day. What then? The answer was so mournful that Harry would close his eyes and plug his ears to block it out—but the only time he ever seemed able to really shut anything out was when Malfoy was reading to the students.

Malfoy had a way of speaking—it was not emotionless, but it was composed, reassuring. Too often, Harry would catch himself clinging to that voice, thinking, as long as he keeps reading I don’t have to think about Sirius or Cedric or Voldemort; as long as he keeps talking we’re still alive, and no one can stop that—not Voldemort, not anyone. Sometimes in the hallways he caught himself listening for the pattern of Malfoy’s speech as he had become trained upon it during the weekly readings, only to meet instead with the sneering, contemptuous drawl he had been favored with for the last six years. At such moments a surge of panic and anger would fill Harry. Malfoy was Malfoy, no matter how many books he read, and Harry was an idiot for thinking that just because his voice was quiet and smooth when he read that suddenly all of life was that way too; that just because Malfoy was single-handedly keeping three hundred students from giving into despair week after week he, Harry, could relax and enjoy himself. But as much as he hated himself for it,Harry’s stomach still lurched in anticipation whenever he saw Malfoy leafing through a book, index finger tracing the page as if he were trying to feel the words; and though Harry still wanted to hit something whenever he caught himself looking forward to the readings, he had stopped wanting to hit Malfoy.

Halfway through December, the Death Eaters began moving North in a swift, merciless campaign that was clearly designed to bring them to Hogwarts. The Ministry, which up till then had been ineffectual in the war effort in comparison to the covert tactics of the Order, at this point launched a full-on counter-attack, putting every available resource at the disposal of the Aurors. Fudge was quoted in the Daily Prophet: “Voldemort’s ultimate goal appears to be the capture of Harry Potter—and this Ministry is determined he shall not succeed.”

Harry read this and, fighting off a wave of strong nausea, stumbled immediately to Dumbledore to say that he would leave Hogwarts if it would be safer for everyone else. Dumbledore would not hear of it. Hogwarts was still the safest location for him right now—regardless of what Fudge said it was vital that they stick together and continue to face their fears as a unit—no one would be safer on their own, and it was his first interest to protect all of his students.

Harry had nodded grimly and then made plans to leave anyway. He tried to conceal it from Ron, but Ron had taken one look at his made bed, swiveled his gaze to his bulging knapsack, and silently begun gathering his own things without a word, ignoring Harry’s protests.

It had been Neville, walking in them both—Harry yelling and Ron packing—who had assessed this situation and said in tremulous tones that Harry couldn’t go.

Harry had fixed a stony gaze on him and asked if he’d rather he stayed there and got them all killed.

No, Neville had said uncertainly—but if Harry weren’t there to teach them self-defense every week—if he left, well, it would be kind of like if Malfoy stopped reading, wouldn’t it?

He stayed.

Many nights Harry would be awakened to the sound of stifled crying from one of the other beds in his dorm room, and though he knew whose sobs were whose, he learned not to distinguish them. Sometimes after news came through of a particularly brutal attack, Hermione would sneak upstairs, her prefect duties forgotten, and slip under the covers, clutching his sleeve and crying. On these occasions he often thought about kissing her, but knew it would only make her cry harder, so instead he held her tight and lay awake listening to her breathing, hearing Malfoy’s voice in his head—I love you, goodbye.

Because the days grew shorter, and the darkness thicker, Harry often wound up doing all of his homework in the afternoons, with Hermione. He managed to require a huge amount of assistance from her—it kept her mind off the fact that she had not had owls from home in over a month. Of the Gryffindors the Weasleys were the ones who were able to keep in touch most frequently, and they went weeks at a time without correspondence. The snap of one owl’s wings over the Great Hall seemed magnified by a thousand, and every eye would turn toward it, anxious and hopeful; when the letters grew less and less frequent, the students adjusted—just as they adjusted to the sight of the plain grey parchment, official Ministry stock, which invariably informed the recipient of news which would cause them to be quietly ushered out of the room by a teacher before they broke the seal, while everyone else averted their eyes. On the days when the grey parchment came, Harry noticed that Malfoy would always read the same passage he had read that first day, about soaring heavenward, being purely borne into the clouds. Listening to Malfoy speaking on those nights, over tear-stained faces, his voice always unwavering, Harry felt all over again that same renewal of spirit, and, even more, found himself being grateful—not for those horrible grey notices, but for the steadiness of Malfoy’s voice when he read, for the patient, quiet way he had accepted his strange new role at Hogwarts.

Sometimes after Malfoy read, Harry would glance down at his scar and realize he could not remember the last time it had cried out for attention. He would rub it disinterestedly, and watch Malfoy, and wonder things about him. In their duels every week they exchanged no more words than they had to—Malfoy would point out that Harry’s aim was too low, or Harry would tell Malfoy not to jerk his wand forward when he cast a spell—it was all stiff and businesslike, and they avoided looking one another in the eyes as much as possible. But Harry had questions he didn’t know how to ask: why had Malfoy started reading that book to begin with? Why did he say yes to Luna? Did he do it because he liked it? What made him pick the things he picked? How did he always seem to know what Harry wanted to hear? Why did he choose Muggle books? Did he like them? Was it all an act? Was he planning on leaving Hogwarts as soon as his father sent for him? Did he fantasize about having his wand at Harry’s throat, just as Harry had done for months?

Malfoy offered no answers; he simply kept on reading.

Christmas came. The students all stayed—the teachers, staff, everyone stayed; and although it was a miserable excuse for a holiday, with hardly anyone left without a reason to grieve, the presence of all his friends around him filled Harry with a comfort that was at least as deep as his longing and terrible sadness. On Christmas day Remus sent him an owl to tell him that he was all right, to wish him a merry Christmas, and to tell him that he didn’t know when he would be able to write again. He sent presents to each of them—to Harry, he sent Sirius’ pocket watch. It was cased in a leather pouch, and it still ran. Harry carefully put it away with his parents’ things.

When evening came, Professor Dumbledore assembled them in the Great Hall, and spoke to them about life and loss and loved ones. Every eye remained dry, in part because half of the audience had learned to steel themselves, in part because the other half had no tears left to shed. But then Dumbledore said simply, “Mr. Malfoy, I believe it is your turn,” and he gestured across the room to the Slytherin table. A shiver of anticipation swept across the entire room, and Malfoy, a fleeting look of surprise betraying his astonishment, stood slowly. Harry suspected it was the first time Dumbledore had so much as hinted at any knowledge of what went on in the Great Hall after dinner once a week—but such was his way.

Malfoy murmured what must have been the  _Accio_  spell under his breath, for a few seats away Pansy Parkinson’s book bag flew open, and a thick book flew out of it into his waiting palm. She gaped, he apologized to her, inclining his head rather gallantly, and then began leafing through the pages.

It was a book they all recognized, and for once the passage was familiar even to Harry. But when Malfoy swallowed and began to read from his same spot at his house table, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted,” the words stayed with Harry, ringing in his ears as if they meant something. And for the space of those few moments when Malfoy read, even though he knew that he would feel guilty for it later, Harry willed himself to let go of his pain and simply exist, to feel the strange uneasy warmth of this Christmas—to  _enjoy_  it, as he had never really been able to enjoy his holidays. For the space of those few moments when Malfoy read, Harry was able to admit that as Christmases go, it had not been bad.

The weekly self-defense trainings continued over the holidays. Harry knew he was probably driving the group who trained with him even more doggedly than he did the Quidditch team, but at least in this instance no one could fault him for taking things too seriously. Nearly everyone showed up—and whether from an overabundance of Christmas spirit a pent-up boredom, they worked harder than Harry had ever seen them. He and Malfoy wound up trying to block some of one another’s most difficult spells yet, and quickly they became so engrossed in their personal duel that Harry soon forgot they were just practicing and attempted to pin Malfoy to the wall with a spell that sent one of the long tables slamming into him, knocking chairs over and scattering students right and left. Malfoy managed to obstruct it, but not before it had caught him in the leg and sent him sprawling to the floor. As Malfoy lay there with the wind knocked out of him Harry felt a wave of sharp fear that he might be really hurt. As ludicrous as it was for him to be worried about Malfoy, he still found himself moving and bending over him, saying “Malfoy, I’m sorry—are you okay?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Potter,” came the answer from Malfoy, who was shakily rising, accepting the hand that Harry had unthinkingly held out to him. Their eyes locked for the first time in weeks of unspoken partnership. The clasp held firm until Malfoy had gotten to his feet again; but by the time he had released it, it would have been impossible to say which of the two of them had had the wind knocked out of him, for both were inexplicably breathless. Harry used the excuse of cleaning up the mess he had made to turn away as quickly as possible. Malfoy seemed only too glad.

In January, Hermione began studying for her NEWTS, and Ron and Luna lost their virginity one night in the Quidditch shed. Harry asked Ron what it was like. Dusty, Ron answered. Hermione demanded hotly how he could think about sex when people were dying all around them, and Ron replied just as heatedly, his face as bright as his hair, that she was just upset because Harry wouldn’t give her a toss. She had slapped him, and Harry had been horrified. Well, it’s true, Ron had said petulantly, and Harry avoided them both steadily after that until they had made up. Walking in on them making out one night—in his bed of all places—he assumed that this had taken place. The next day Charlie Weasley was killed, and the three of them stayed up all night with their arms around each other, Harry with his mouth and eyes full of Hermione’s hair, and Ron leaning into him heavily, as if he had lost the use of his muscles along with Charlie. The notice had come in the middle of the night, and Dumbledore had awakened the three of them. Ron waited until morning to tell Ginny. When he finally fetched her she took one look at his drawn face and red eyes and threw herself into his arms, sobbing noiselessly.

It had happened in one of the most serious counter-attacks in the war. Charlie, not wanting his family to worry, had not alerted them to the fact that he had returned from Romania to join the Aurors. Ron thought that bill had probably known as well, but none of the rest of them had any idea that he was anywhere but out of immediate danger. The attack had involved many of the best Aurors and a horde of Death Eaters who, as it turned out, were not as unsuspecting as had been anticipated. Both sides had fought into the night with great losses and greater casualties, until at last the exhausted Aurors had called a retreat. They had left behind scores of dead, whose bodies were now at the mercy of the Death Eaters. It had been a Pyrrhic victory, they were told. Charlie had not died in vain. But a victory was still a victory, and everyone knew it.

Ginny and Ron had wanted to leave as soon as possible, but the Floo networks were in such a shambles, their security utterly demolished, that Dumbledore could not guarantee their immediate protection. In the meantime, perhaps it would be better if Harry and Hermione were to return to their classes.

“No,” said Ron abruptly. Awkwardly, they turned. Ron’s face was all entreaty. “Her—Hermione, would you—could you come with—”

“Yes, of course,” she said immediately, going to his side and lacing her fingers tightly in his. Her voice was hoarse, her eyes soft and faintly red as she met Harry’s look at them both. Ginny, looking small and lost, blindly reached out for Hermione’s other hand. Harry went to his next class.

At lunch the two empty spaces on either side of him made him feel stupid, but he didn’t feel right moving to a different seat. His friends gave him pats on the shoulder, and some of the girls in Ginny’s year wiped away tears. Harry sat silent. He didn’t look up from his plate much until the screech of an owl arrested his ears; the impulse to lift his head at the sound was automatic.

There were two of them, both of them beautiful white snow owls used by the Ministry; both were carrying long envelopes of grey parchment. Harry’s eyes fastened onto one and watched it fly overhead and make an arc that took it to the Slytherin table, where every head was upturned, every member of the house watching in silent dread. Harry realized an instant before the owl let the letter fall from its talons where it was going to land—only to have his gasp of astonishment silenced as the second owl, the one he had not been watching, dropped the other grey parchment on top of his own plate.

All around him the gasps of the other Gryffindors echoed the cry he could not voice. For a moment his eyes met Malfoy’s shocked stare from across the room, and they sat frozen, pinned into place by the sight of one another’s letters. Then the quick click of McGonagall’s heels as she strode toward him jolted him, and he said softly, without inclining his head in her direction, “Leave me alone.”

“Harry, I think it’s best if you come with—”

LEAVE ME ALONE!”

Through the tense and rigid silence that followed, Harry heard Professor Snape calling Malfoy away, heard Malfoy pushing aside his plate and walking swiftly from the room with no other sound echoing in the entire place; and Harry was left still staring at the outside of the envelope, with its official Ministry seal and his name scrawled on it in elegant handwriting:  _Harry James Potter_. He stared at it for perhaps seconds, perhaps an eternity, before he finally grabbed his wand and ripped the seal open with it.

_It is with deepest sympathy and sadness that we regret to inform you that Auror Remus Lupin was killed in battle last night while fighting bravely for the safety of_

It was several minutes before Harry could distinguish anything but the roaring in his ears and the powerful beating of his own heart in his chest, and longer before he could begin to comprehend the rest of the letter. At the bottom, in a fat nonchalant script, below the official signature, were words Harry finally comprehended on the third or fourth attempt:

_Harry, my dear boy, I am sure you will be comforted to know that Remus died fighting to protect you. Now he and Sirius are together and at peace. All my sympathies-- C.F._

Harry blinked at the words. Remus had died fighting to stop Voldemort from reaching Hogwarts, because Voldemort wanted to kill him.

They were all dead because of him. The words became a blur in front of him. None of it made sense. Nothing would ever make sense again. And now Remus—

Blindly he rose from the table and made his way shakily out of the room, ignoring the concerned voices around him. Ron and Hermione—they were gone too; everyone was gone. He was going to lose them. Everyone he had ever loved would be lost.

He didn’t remember later how he found the exit, only that he burst into a run as soon as he was through the doors. He knew nothing in that moment apart from the blinding urge to escape. His cheeks burned, and he hardly felt the stone beneath his feet—

—but he felt the iron grip on his shoulder that jerked him to a halt, and heard the rough dark voice cutting through the tumult of his thoughts:

“Just where do you expect to run to, Mr. Potter?”

Harry spun around as the long bony fingers dug into his shoulder like talons. He met Snape’s cold unfeeling stare and attempted to break free, but even with only one hand Snape’s grasp was strong. Harry felt a sudden pang of envy. Snape had no heart—Snape couldn’t possible care—he couldn’t be touched no matter how many people were dying around him. Harry wished desperately and bitterly that he could cut off his emotions the way Snape did, detach himself completely from all of this. He had tried—after Sirius died he had tried with all his will—and yet somehow in the last few months he had failed. Things had started to matter to him again. He had remembered what it was like to care.

And it  _hurt_. It  _hurt_.

“LET GO OF ME!” he bellowed, twisting unsuccessfully.

“Listen to me, both of you,” Snape said sharply—and Harry saw that in his other hand Snape was gripping Draco Malfoy by the arm. He was pale and his features were drawn, his body limp, as if he couldn’t have stayed standing on his own.

Later Harry would realize that was in fact the case. But just then he couldn’t think at all, and he heard himself screaming things back at Snape, screaming just to hear himself scream, because it felt  _good_ , and he was yelling about hate and lies, and everything was Snape’s fault,  _everything,_ and he couldn’t stop screaming. Malfoy was wincing at every word Harry was saying, still wearing that pained disbelieving expression, and Snape looked just like he always looked, cold and callous and cruel and horrible, and Harry hated him, hated both of them, and he hoped that if there was a hell that they would rot in it forever.

It could have been seconds, minutes later when Harry ran out of words and stopped, feeling only silence and exhaustion. When he did, Snape continued in his normal voice, as if Harry hadn’t spoken at all.

“Narcissa and Remus were killed last night in the same battle that killed Charlie Weasley. The Aurors were unable to go back and identify the rest of the dead until early this morning. They are still identifying bodies, and I can assure you yours will not be the only seats receiving owls in the days to come.” His voice was clipped and businesslike. “There is no point in grieving alone, Mr. Potter. Arthur Weasley has been notified of Professor Lupin’s death and I am sure he will be sending for you to join their family as soon as possible. You will be safe with them. Draco, your father will expect you to go home for your mother’s funeral, but I must make you understand this—if you go home, you will not be able to come back. Your father will not allow you to return to Hogwarts. Is that clear?”

Still dazed, Malfoy nodded, then took a shaky breath and said in a thin, faltering voice, “I’ll stay here.”

Snape nodded curtly, and Harry felt his grip relax a fraction. He gave into the immediate impulse to break away from Snape, but he suddenly found he didn’t have the strength to run again. His muscles felt tired, worn out, as if he’d been running all day. Uncertainly he glanced from Snape, who stared down at him impassively, to Malfoy, who was staring unseeing at the floor, and realized as he took in Malfoy’s deadened expression that Malfoy had just lost his mother and, for all intents and purposes, his father, at once. For once his emotions were so plainly written on his face that Harry knew exactly what he was feeling—knew because he had felt it every day of his life.

He closed his eyes and held on for a long moment to the thought of what he was going to do to Voldemort.

Then he opened them again and said firmly, looking at Malfoy, “I’ll stay here, too. The Weasleys won’t be safe if I’m with them.”

For an instant something akin to approval flashed across Snape’s face, but it was gone as soon as Harry had imagined it. “I will inform the headmaster of your decision,” said Snape.

“I can do that myself,” Harry snapped, turning away.

“As you wish,” came the cold rejoinder.

“Potter.” Malfoy’s voice was soft, and sounded unaccustomed to saying his name without attaching an automatic sneer. Harry turned back, but Malfoy didn’t raise his eyes from the floor.

“Tell him for me,” he said. “Tell him I’m staying, too.”

Harry wanted to retort ‘tell him yourself.’ Instead he just said, “okay.” Malfoy nodded in his direction, and Snape finally let go of his arm. Harry left the two of them there, Snape a tall thin outline in black, Malfoy a smaller, ungallant huddle next to him.

Dumbledore’s reaction to Harry’s disclosure was to sit up straighter in his chair and say “Ah,” very significantly. Harry didn’t tell him about Snape gripping his collar, or about the way Malfoy had looked when he had said he would stay at Hogwarts.

The rest of the day was excruciating. Harry dragged himself to classes, wondered when Ron and Hermione would be back, and ignored anyone who asked him how he was. He noted vaguely that Malfoy hadn’t shown up for classes, and privately expected him to change his mind and go join his father. If it had been his father, Harry thought, he would have wanted to be with him, Death Eaters or no Death Eaters—except that Malfoy’s dad was Lucius Malfoy. And now Malfoy’s mom was dead and he might not ever see his dad again. Harry didn’t like the idea of having anything in common with Malfoy, just like that, out of the blue—but there was nothing he could do about it. He was tired. He wanted to be by himself, somewhere closed-off and peaceful, but he kept feeling the worried stares of his friends on him, and knew that they needed him to be okay.

So Harry was okay.

Remus stayed dead all through the following day, and Harry made himself forget to mourn. Malfoy showed up in classes again to sit quietly staring into space, rolling his quill between his fingers and looking lost. Ron sent Harry an urgent owl to say that the three of them would be back the next day, and to hold on, okay?

Harry held on, and went numbly through the evening, unable even to work of a helping of righteous hatred. He sat unfeeling and undisturbed through dinner, and it was only when he noticed the familiar stir begin around him afterwards that he realized all at once: it was the appointed night for Malfoy to do his reading.

His reflexive glance up at the Slytherin table was pointless, there was no way Malfoy would be reading tonight. Maybe not tonight or ever again, he thought.

A cold chill shuddered through him; it brought him further out of the empty shell of his thoughts. Malfoy was sitting perfectly motionless, his fingertips brushing the pages of a book that lay open in front of him. He looked rigid with emotion, or possibly with indecision.

Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a great wellspring of hope surged up within Harry. The possibility, even the remote possibility, that Malfoy  _might_  be reading, made it easier for Harry to admit what he had known all along but refused to think about: that if Malfoy stopped reading it would be one of the worst casualties of the war, for all of them.

He sat watching Malfoy, along with the other students, pulled unconsciously to the edge of his seat. He wanted to do something absurd like sending him an encouraging smile, or a thumbs up, or any one of a number of things he would never have given to Draco Malfoy. But smiles were a mockery, and Harry knew that no one could decide whether Malfoy would read that night or not but Malfoy; so Harry sat, and waited, with everyone else at Hogwarts.

At length, Malfoy stood up. He will leave, Harry thought; but he did not. Instead he picked up his book and took what had become his usual place at the center of the room, between the many rows of students around him. No one moved, and a vast silence fell over the Hall.

Malfoy looked pale and exhausted. He wore on a tired face the remnants of every emotion that had plagued Harry’s heart for so many months—sorrow, bitterness, fear, violent hatred—Harry knew them all, so well; and even though he knew that no one in Hogwarts could possibly hope to escape those things in the onslaught of that terrible war, he wanted suddenly, desperately, to take them off of Malfoy’s face. As ludicrous as the concept was, Malfoy had become important to them. He was their Reader, and if he stopped reading now it would be worse than giving into all those deadening emotions—it would be like giving up altogether; and he would be taking all the rest of them with him.

Please, Harry thought over and over again. Please, please, please.

Malfoy looked up from his book, his glance darting with unseeing swiftness around the room. When he met Harry’s eyes something shifted in his own; they sparked with feeling, and, prying his gaze away from Harry, he began to speak.

“Come to me in the silence of the night,” he said softly. His voice was hoarse, but he swallowed, and pushed on.

“Come in the speaking silence of a dream;  
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright  
As sunlight on a stream;  
Come back in tears,  
O memory, hope, love of finished years.”

As he read, tears started in his eyes and in his voice, and he seemed to be every second a heartbeat away from breaking into a sob; but the cry never came, and all that remained was the harrowing line between the spoken words of his poem and the heartache that lay beyond them.

“O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,  
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,  
Where souls brimful of love abide and meet,  
Where thirsting longing eyes  
Watch the slow door  
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.  
Yet come to me in dreams that I may live  
My very life again though cold in death:  
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give  
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:  
Speak low, lean low,  
As long ago, my love, how long ago.”

Nothing but silence touched the echo of his words in that great room as he finished. It seemed to Harry that Malfoy looked even more drawn and pale than when he began. He would never have dreamed that the sight of Draco Malfoy standing in front of all Hogwarts with tears staining his smooth white face would have been anything but delightfully humiliating; but it was, to Harry, the most inspiring thing he had ever seen.

It was not until much later that evening, after Malfoy had departed from the Great Hall and all the Slytherins after him, after all the Gryffindors had gone to bed, and Neville and Seamus and Dean were enjoying a deep sleep from which, for once, Ron’s snores could not awaken them, that Harry found himself alone in the dark, listening to the words of Malfoy’s poem.  _Come to me in the silence of the night,_  he heard Malfoy saying in that thin voice, over and over again.  _Come back to me in dreams._

And suddenly the lost lonely hours of his childhood, the many hours he had spent longing for faces he did not know, the faces of his mother and father, to come to him in his dreams, were upon him; and Harry wept.

As a child he had never cried, never. Privately, though he had never thought of it as a weakness, he had simply thought of it as something he did not do. He had never, so he had thought back then, had a reason to cry, not really—and then at last when he did, after Cedric and Sirius and now Remus, he had never been able to. Someone was always around him, expecting him to be strong for them; and since Cho had kissed him with tears in her mouth last year he had been unable to see tears as anything but in the way.

But the image of Malfoy forcing himself to read through his tears was at once so powerful and so painful that Harry could not escape it—because he understood it; because he respected it; because he knew exactly how much pain Malfoy had had to push through. He had seen it in Malfoy’s face—he had lived it himself. And somehow Malfoy and his stupid poem had cracked him open, and he wept.

He wept for his mum, with her soft green eyes, who would never run her fingers through his hair; and for his dad, who would never get to see him win at Quidditch, or tell him stories of him and Remus and Sirius in high school. He wept for Hermione, who had accepted with silence that she would probably never know how her grandparents had been killed; for Charlie, who had tried so hard to protect his family from worrying about him; for Ron, who had lost Charlie before he ever knew he was in danger, and who stood at any moment in peril of losing one of his other brothers or his father as well; for Ginny and the memories of Tom Riddle inside of her that she would never be able to erase; for Molly, trying and failing to banish the Boggart of her dead family. He wept for Cedric—for Cedric’s wide stunned look of surprise, and for his mother and father, and for Cho, who hadn’t been that bad, really, just a little weepy; he wept for Lavender and Parvati, and wondered if they were safe—if Lavender’s parents had ever found her, or if she had lost her family forever. He wept for Dumbledore, and for all the things Dumbledore had seen, for all the ways he had tried to protect Harry and failed, and all the ways Harry must have failed him in return.

He wept for Sirius, for Sirius and Remus, who had been the only family he had ever known; Sirius and Remus, who he loved; who had loved him; who he would never, ever, ever stop missing.

He wept for Malfoy; and he wept for himself.

He stayed crying into the night, until he was spent and exhausted, until his eyes were swollen and his chest congested and shuddering. He cried until he was sore, until a deceptive peace stole over him and he slept, deeply.

He was awakened by a cool, smooth hand on his forehead. Sunlight streamed into the dorm, and coming out of his slumber he thought he was with his mother at last. But he heard Hermione say in her gentle voice, leaning low beside him, “Harry… we’re here, Harry,” and as he opened his eyes he saw that she had pillowed his head in her lap, tears running silently over her cheeks as she watched him sleep. Beside her Ron sat cross-legged on his bed, his eyes red, a little watery, but full of concern as they met Harry’s.

Harry sat up and dragged them both into his arms. They hugged him fiercely, and Harry felt suddenly more love for them than he had ever known he could feel before—as if the purging of all his sorrow the night before had left him free to fill the leftover empty space with love. And he loved them both, so much.

Everything seemed sharper to Harry that morning. Brights were brighter, darks were darker. He no longer felt eaten up with hate and sorrow—instead all his heartbreak and all his love, all his anger and all his pain and all his joy and laughter were wrapped up together, intensified.

He tried several times that morning to tell Ron and Hermione about Malfoy—about the death of his mother, about Snape holding him upright in the hallway, about the reading. But he was never able to get the words out. He didn’t think he could do justice to the unforgettable picture of Malfoy standing in front of everyone reading to them, reading for them, with tears running down his cheeks; and he felt, unexpectedly, a surge of protectiveness at the thought that Ron might unthinkingly make fun of Malfoy if he said anything at all.

It was something private, Harry decided, the way Malfoy had caused him to feel the previous night. He could have no more successfully articulated it than he could have stopped thinking about it.

The next time he caught a glimpse of Malfoy it was in Potions class. He walked in with Ron and Hermione on either side of him, feeling alive and complete again, and saw Malfoy sitting in his usual spot. He was hunched over a bit, his posture stiff and guarded and perhaps even defeated. Harry, glancing over at him, saw instantly that whatever the reading from the previous night may have given to anyone else, Harry included, Malfoy himself was still hurting just as much as he had been the day before.

Harry, noting this in the space of one look, found himself wanting once again to take the pain out of Malfoy’s expression, just as he had done the night before. Only this time there was no reading involved, and nothing was at stake, except perhaps Harry’s sanity. After all, the hopes of three hundred other students were not riding on Malfoy’s Potions performance.

But it suddenly seemed that Harry’s were.

Malfoy, in the space of those few months as the Reader, had  _not_  just become important to the school.

He had become important to  _Harry._

With hardly an exchange of words between them, Harry felt somehow that he had come to understand Malfoy in recent weeks—had come to know him as he knew few people. He felt intuitively that Malfoy had grown to understand him as well, or at least come to tolerate him. Often, when he closed his eyes it was Malfoy’s voice he heard in his ears, as if Malfoy had purposely chosen his readings and addressed them directly to Harry.

Maybe he hadn’t been addressing them directly to Harry; but watching him now, Harry realized that he wanted Malfoy to acknowledge him directly—to acknowledge the shared bond that had formed between them. It was a bond, wasn’t it? There had been something there, something that had caused Malfoy’s hand to burn for the brief moment when Harry had clasped it—something that had caused his eyes to flicker with emotion when they met Harry’s.

Harry sat down at his desk, in-between Ron and Hermione, with his eyes fastened to Malfoy. Look at me, he thought. Look at me.

But Malfoy did not look up; he stayed still, focused on the blank space in front of him, until Harry wanted to cross the room and throttle him. And at the same time he felt helpless, because it had been Malfoy’s reading which had pulled him slowly out of his own dreary blank spaces—but he had nothing to give back in return.

He wanted Malfoy to  _know_  somehow how profoundly he had been moved; how the words Malfoy read had seared themselves onto his soul, until Harry would never be without them. He wanted Malfoy to know that everything had changed somehow, and that it was maybe because of  _him_  that Harry felt this way—felt as if he could survive anything, even the crushing weight of his own hatred, as long as Malfoy could keep reading.

And because he could not tell Malfoy that Malfoy meant something to him, the only natural thing was that Malfoy should come to mean more to him than before.

In the days that followed Remus’ death, Harry felt as if he took his loves with him everywhere—his love for Ron and Hermione, his love for Sirius and Remus and their memory, for Hagrid and Dumbledore and all his friends. It felt so good to be in so much love, and still he kept watching Malfoy for a sign that he understood—that he knew what he had given Harry. If Malfoy knew, he never let on. It was frustrating. But Harry was determined; and it had been a long time since he had given up hope about anything.

The fact that Malfoy meant something to Harry meant that Harry began to teach his eyes to caress Malfoy’s sharp pale features rather than glaring at them. It meant learning to listen for his cool voice among all the voices that he knew, and coming to know it not for the unmistakable sneer that had always been present in it, but for the quiet calm it seemed to possess now. It meant that Harry scanned Malfoy’s face for traces of improvement in the steady pallor that he had been wearing since his mother’s death, and that when Malfoy looked up and caught him he could not bring himself to look away directly; that instead of anticipating the arrival of more gray Owls from the Ministry, he anticipated the moments when their hands would brush again as they had done that first day; when Malfoy would casually ask Harry a question under his breath, and it would seem to Harry for just a moment as if they did this sort of thing all the time, as if they were old friends who understood one another the way Harry wanted to be understood.

Spring came, sooner than expected, and with it, more fighting, more deaths; but the sky burst open in sunlight, and Ron learned to laugh again as he and Harry broke out their brooms with the first thaw. Harry did not work the Quidditch team quite so hard, and after practices they all sat talking quietly and smiling in the locker rooms, gazes lingering on each other’s faces as if they needed to memorize them, save these conversations for later—for later when they were out  _there_  and no longer safe.

Ron started studying harder because of Hermione, and they snuck away at nights to do things that made Harry smile to think about, because those things meant his friends were happy. Justin Finch-Fletchley’s dad rebuilt the ancestral mansion. Draco Malfoy gave Millicent Bulstrode a new cat. And one day Harry Potter summoned his nerve and gave Draco Malfoy a book of quotes.

The following evening, when Malfoy read, he stood in the center of the great hall with every eye on him, and opened the book that Harry had given him, and read in his clear smooth voice:

“And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found, and then a new and splendid life would begin; and it was clear to them that they had still a long, long road before them, and that the most complicated and difficult part of it was only just beginning.”

And, as he finished reading, Malfoy looked at Harry and smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> Malfoy reads, respectively, from “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien; The Awakening by Kate Chopin; the Beatitudes; “Echo” by Christina Rosetti; and “Lady With the Pet Dog” by Chekhov.
> 
>  
> 
> There is a DVD commentary for this fic at almost_hd, in two parts, [here](http://almost-hd.livejournal.com/4885.html) and [here.](http://almost-hd.livejournal.com/5250.html)


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